Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has said food is cheap in Ghana despite the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus in the country.
In recent times, due to the outbreak, there have been complaints of hikes in prices of foodstuff due to the pandemic.
But commenting on the alleged price hikes at the Meet the Press session yesterday Thursday, April 23, 2020, Dr. Akoto said there are food surpluses in the system attributing the fete on government’s Planting for Food and Jobs program.
“The hike in food prices, I think we all recognize that only four years ago, a bunch of plantains, you had to spend GHS40 but now with GHS3 to GHS6, you can get a bunch of plantains. It shows you clearly that we have come to reduce the prices of food even in major cities like Accra where there are substantial rushes in the markets. Most families who could not afford one meal a day can now afford three meals a day because food is so cheap and we will continue to ensure that planting for food and jobs will deliver even more food to areas of consumption to makes lives very easy for families in consuming areas,” the Minister noted.
A day after the minister made those claims, Joy news did not end it there by rather touring some various market centres within the country to exactly find out and confirm if whether what the minister said was true.
A survey was made and interviews were carried out. this sounded very disappointing some retailers of foodstuff which the minister claimed to have been cheaper as compared to the last 4 years, such as plantain and yam sellers.
Some of these market women bemoaned that, what the minister said is never true, rather prices are very high as compared to the last 4 years. They further explained that such food prices are determined by the season in which they find themselves.
This means the above prices attributed to the foodstuffs by the minister were lies and it rather goes against them.
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